The Washington Post published an interview [...] with Paul Horner, who has made his living off of writing viral news hoaxes on sites like Facebook for the past several years. "But in recent months, Horner has found the fake-news ecosystem growing more crowded, more political and vastly more influential: In March, Donald Trump's son Eric and his then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, even tweeted links to one of Horner's faux-articles. His stories have also appeared as news on Google."
Although Horner compares himself to parody and satire sites like The Onion (though less obvious), he's now concerned about the influence of fake news. A few excerpts from the interview:
On why he has seen greater popularity recently:
Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that's how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn't care because they'd already accepted it. It's real scary. I've never seen anything like it.
How he thinks people should treat his fake news:
I thought they'd fact-check it, and it'd make them look worse. I mean that's how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it's false, then they look like idiots. [... But] they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything!
On the recent push by Facebook and Google to target fake news sites:
Yeah, I mean — a lot of the sites people are talking about, they're just total BS sites. There's no creativity or purpose behind them. I'm glad they're getting rid of them. I don't like getting lumped in with Huzlers. I like getting lumped in with the Onion. The stuff I do — I spend more time on it. There's purpose and meaning behind it. I don't just write fake news just to write it.
[...] I'm glad they're getting rid of those sites. I just hope they don't get rid of mine, too.
Related reporting from Alternet.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:52PM
Wow...There's a big difference between slanted and fake. There are sites out there swearing that Trump won the popular vote ffs.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday November 24 2016, @10:32PM
He did win the popular vote, overwhelmingly (apart from people voting for Clinton).
https://twitter.com/WSJopinion/status/798656651112787969 [twitter.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/15/thanks-to-a-bad-map-and-bizarre-math-breitbart-can-report-that-trump-won-the-real-popular-vote/ [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday November 25 2016, @04:40AM
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday November 25 2016, @05:13AM
There's a big difference between slanted and fake.
One word: Wikileaks. Peddle that shit elsewhere pal, HuffingPaint wasn't biased, they were on the same Org Chart with HRC.
Now, compare the made up shit they were doing, including that bullcrap "disclaimer" on every article and tell me why they are "real news" and breitbart.com is "fake news." Remember, that is what is under discussion here, please try to keep up. Considering their editor in chief did end up in the Trump White House you could argue (and I wouldn't seriously dispute) they are AS BAD as Huffpo.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Friday November 25 2016, @02:50PM
Much the way Fox News is always on the Republican "org chart", and while they're biased, I wouldn't lump them in with "fake news" sites either, even though they often get their facts seriously wrong.
The fact that you think HP is "fake news" is a pretty good sign that you believe sites that actually are.